Mr. Speaker, I am not here tonight to talk about the abuses of the partisan and patronage dumping ground also known as the Senate. The abuses that have happened are well known, the improper expenses of Senators Duffy, Wallin, Harb and other senators in the past who abused their position. These are the facts, and I am not here to address that.

What I would like to discuss are the arguments that members and people use in defence of the relevance of the Senate. Often, members will refer to the work that Senate committees do and the reports that come out of those committees as a useful use of the Senate.

If members recall, a few years ago the Canadian dollar reached parity with the U.S. dollar. People wondered, if our dollar was worth the same, why we still paid more than American consumers did south of the border. The Senate finance committee had a look at the issue and studied it quite extensively. It wanted to get to the bottom of this question, and it came up with a report called, “The Canada-USA Price Gap”.

Senator Smith participated in this. He lives in the same town as I do, even though he is the senator for Saurel and Vaudreuil-Soulanges is quite far away from there.

I am sure that most Canadians have not heard of this report, but I looked at it with interest. Basically, the Senate looked into the Canada-U.S.A price gap and found some interesting recommendations. It found that higher tariffs were responsible for the price difference, and I will cite from the report. It states:

The officials from the Department of Finance said that, although there are some examples of differences in tariff rates between Canada and the United States that could contribute to price discrepancies for certain products, most tariffs rates are low.

This would seem to confirm the government's present position, although later on it says:

Almost all the other witnesses who appeared before the Committee disagreed with the opinion expressed by the officials from the Department of Finance, according to which tariff differences between Canada and the United States are not a major factor contributing to prices discrepancies between the two countries.

Who disagreed with the department officials? Well, the Retail Council of Canada, Canadian Tire Corporation Ltd., Reebok-CCM Hockey, the Canadian apparel Industry and representatives from Deloitte and Touche, which members may recognize as the firm that did the audit on the Senate and its abuse of expenses.

Basically, the Senate committee told the government that its recommendation was to lower tariffs on products to help Canadian consumers and to bring prices on both sides of the border closer to each other.

What did the government do? It looked at the report and raised tariffs. It did not even listen to the Senate committee. Therefore, all the work that was done to produce this report, all the senators who put hours in and the witnesses who appeared before the committee, resulted in a completely useless report because the government did not take its recommendations. We can multiply this a hundred times where members of the House have not paid attention to the work the Senate has done.

Therefore, I think it is quite clear. Other countries have abolished their upper House when they did not see the relevance of it, and they have been fine. Other countries have Houses that are truly representative. However, our Senate is neither, and it must be abolished.

Jamie Nicholls

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Adjournment Proceedings

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